Tuesday, 12 May 2015

Bouvet Island DXpedition - 2016

Sad news today that Mark, ON4WW, will not be
doing the Bouvet Island DXpedition next year.

Mark's plan was to do a solo DXpedition and to
do it over a three month period. Over that amount of
time nearly every ham who needed Bouvet Island could have had it in their
logbooks on numerous occasions, and on several bands.

Unfortunately, Mark was unable to collect
sufficient funding for this adventure. For some reason the big DXpedition
supporters and donors were not very interested in this event and not many
donations came through.

Mark had received permission for Bouvet
from the Norwegian Polar Institute, his wife (very important!!), and his
employer to have 5 months leave without pay. I'm sure Mark is bitterly
disappointed that his year long planning has been all for nothing.

I think Mark's plan to go solo, although a bit
controversial, is one way of keeping these DXpeditions to far away and remote locations
sustainable. If we look at the cost of doing some of the more recent
DXpeditions, including K1N, they have been out of this world. I truly
believe that smaller and more compact teams are the answer to keeping the
skyrocketing costs down.

For safeties sake I think it would be a lot
safer to go with a minimum of three people, going solo does seem a bit
dangerous to me, but that's Mark's decision to make, as he knows his own
limitations better than anyone.

One must ask if we really need five to eight
HF stations on the air, all at the same time? Or, could a DXpedition get
by with just two or three? Do we need to be spending thousands of dollars
transporting beams and Yagi's to these remote sites.........when many of us
work the world on simple dipoles at home with no problems? Perhaps the
whole idea of how Expeditions are conducted needs to be reconsidered and
discussed in depth. Bigger is not always better!

While I occasionally dream of doing a
major DXpedition to some far off remote location, I think for now I'll stick
with my own mini-DXpeditions to Wolfe and Simcoe Islands, where the most
expensive aspect of the trip is buying lunch on the way back. That's more
in keeping with my budget.......